


44

by orphan_account



Category: Free!
Genre: F/F, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 19:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1954248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You could learn to be self-indulgent, if you stopped and smelled the roses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	44

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KAZ1167](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KAZ1167/gifts).



> it's been roughly 300 years since i've written makoharu so this story is gonna be about 300x rougher than it should be. it's also okay if this doesn't make sense to you. it doesn't make sense to me, either. title/quote from antoine de saint-exupéry's _le petit prince._

~

_“Of course, I love you,' the flower said to him. 'If you were not aware of it, it was my fault.”_

 

 

 

That was - twice, now, Makoto thought, when Haru’s glance slipped past his eyes and dipped itself calmly into the distant ocean. It was summer, merciless shining heated summer, the sort that made it hard to look at anything for too long without getting an afterimage seared behind his eyelids. Haru was like that, not ghostly, but compared to himself, moon-pale in broad daylight, glowing so that all the edges of his face smeared itself into white light.

That was twice now that Makoto thought he would look at him, only to find that his gaze was seven degrees off, skating past the tips of his hair to fix at the air by his ear, or else crackling like the sand beneath their feet, wide and unblinking, unseeing. They sat there quiet in the sand, letting the eager heat melt them slowly into listless piles of exhausted human.

“Nagisa and Rei will be back soon,” Makoto said absently, forcing himself to look away from the slender angle of Haru’s elbow.

He didn’t think Haru would say anything, but a quiet “okay” excused itself from between Haru’s lips.

 

<< 

It didn’t happen slowly or suddenly. It kind of crept up on him, one spring day realizing that the quirk in Haru’s mouth had somehow vanished.

After taking a film course centered around Hayao Miyazaki he learned:

1) He could take a moment to breathe, breathe in the world around him. In the west there was a saying, something to the leisurely tune of “stop and smell the roses”. He walked around campus one afternoon and took the time to watch a leaf fall out of a tree, flashing yellow against orange against red.

2) Love was so strange, and so, so varied.

It was probably a combination of these two things that sharpened and blurred his gaze at the same time, thinking a lot about the softness of Haru’s eyes and not noticing the slant of his mouth, being hyper-aware of the tension between Haru’s shoulders but not hearing the stuttered collapse of breath in his lungs. Haru had always been quiet.

 

>> 

“So, so, so,” Nagisa chanted, three times; he took a fleeting seat next to Haru but soon bounced up to latch stickily onto Rei’s arm. “When’s Natsumi-chan coming?”

“She’s not,” Makoto said. The sand started to burn. “We’re not together anymore.”

“Ehhh, really? That’s too bad, I knew Mako-chan would be the first to get a girlfriend but I didn’t think he’d be the first to get a heartbreak.” Nagisa held out an ice pop. “Here, eat this.”

“I’m okay,” Makoto insisted, but he took the ice pop anyway. It was lemon flavored. Through the shimmering heat Nagisa’s voice sounded like it was coming through a phone speaker, sharp and not entirely real. “It was kind of mutual.” He took a bite. “I’m okay,” he repeated, and smiled, a slow smile, not sure where it was coming from. Next to him Haru made a quiet noise. “Here, Haru.”

Haru stared at the ice pop like it had burned his hand.

“It’s dripping,” Rei said, out of nowhere, napkins on hand, “it’ll get onto the towel.”

“Oh, here, let me help,” Makoto started, and at the same time, distinctly heard Haru say: “No, he isn’t.”

 

>> 

What came out of Makoto’s mouth surprised himself, too. Haru looked even softer after having been scrubbed through by the sand. “I’m taking a year at Johns Hopkins.”

Oh. He supposed he was. For some stupid reason he kept talking. “I barely passed the English proficiency tests but I did really well on the other aptitude ones. They were really impressed about the swimming, Haru. I guess that’s kind of thanks to you and Rin. And I guess going away for a while might.. help, you know. With. Natsumi-chan.”

“Yeah,” Haru answered, even though he hadn’t been asked anything.

 

<< 

“You’ve always got the music playing,” and that was the first sign of trouble, really. Nakagawa Natsumi had a brother who went to Samezuka Academy and was vice-captain of their swim team. She looked a little bit like Kou, with long hair and pretty eyelashes, and had Nagisa’s smile and head tilt. No matter how much he wanted to branch out into something new, Makoto always seemed to tether himself to the past. He supposed that was just how stories were told.

“Yeah, sorry, Haru’s running an experiment for physics. We can turn it down a little lower, if it bothers you.”

Natsumi was a really nice girl. When Makoto kissed her the first time and then let go she kissed him back in order to preemptively stop the flow of apologies. She had nice shoulders. Pale. Really long legs, long and slim, and they looked great in yellow strapped heels.

“No, it’s okay. Can we go somewhere else? The plum blossoms are in full bloom and you just take me inside, honestly, Makoto-kun.”

“Ah, sorry, sorry. Let’s go! We can take some cookies that my mother sent me and stop at the third bench from the math building. That’s the only one with shade.”

 

<< 

Haru looked up from beyond a mass slaying of calculus problems. He’d dotted the paper graveyard with graphite tombstones and filled in the flower petal solutions, white pen on black paper, white lilies and black tuxedos, and Makoto wondered what he was doing.

“I’m studying,” Haru replied.

“Studying,” Makoto said weakly.

“Studying,” added Haru, and the corner of his mouth quirked up.

“... why are you studying?” And distinctly, almost ominously, Makoto felt something shifting. Haru turned over a page of notes and stared at it for a moment before lifting his gaze up to meet Makoto’s eyes again.

“Because I want to go with you.”

 

>> 

“I can’t go with you,” Natsumi said, rocking back on her yellow strapped heels.

“Ah, are you going to be busy?” Makoto could remember everything about Natsumi. The curl of her hair, the point of her eyeliner, the pleated skirt of her sundress. It was pale green and looked German inspired. He could remember everything about her when she was in front of him.

“No. I… I can’t, Makoto-kun, I don’t think this is working out. With us.” She was wearing a ring, jagged silver bright against her slender fingers. “It’s just… hard, you know? It’s hard to keep doing this.”

“I’m not sure what you mean, Natsumi-chan.”

But he was sure. It felt like the pavement underneath him was coming up to slam him in the back of his head, except not from the outside, from the inside.

“I can’t go to the beach with you. I’m - we should break up.”

 

>> 

“Earlier at the beach, when you said -” Makoto started, uncertain, too certain.

Haru was quiet for a moment, leaning against the wall, not even pretending to read anymore. “I think you know what I meant.”

He did know. But he didn’t know how to react to it, exactly.

Makoto looked around the room, to the two bookshelves, to the three seashells on the windowsill, to the laptops hibernating on their desks. It looked more like his own room than it did Haru’s. Haru had followed him here, away from Iwatobi and away from the sea and away from everything he’d grown up with, replaced soaks in the tub with neck cramps over math, and somehow when he got here everything that was sliding into place with the two of them slid back out of place, and whatever conclusion Makoto thought he’d come to before college, before even the entrance exam, slipped away on a current that he was too afraid to chase.

They had the same set of sheets, but in different colors. The same eight-pack of pens and thirty-six pack of mechanical pencils and binders for class and lined paper for notes.

Afternoons on Thursdays Haru got out of class first and met him at the pool in the recreational center, and they went to dinner together, but somehow -

The first time Makoto brought Natsumi back to his room and somehow -

The first time the three of them hung out, and he’d said something and Natsumi had giggled and somehow -

“Don’t bring your American flag T-shirt,” Haru said, his eyes falling towards the shoes in the doorway. “You’ll look like a tourist once you get there.”

 

>> 

Makoto’s flight was in late July, non-stop to Baltimore, Maryland, United States.

Haru grew even quieter as the date approached, as June matured and deepened all the greens. Makoto had meetings every other day, it felt like, rushing from one end of campus to another, five different advisors, an English conversation tutor, phone calls from home, papers upon papers upon papers.

On July fourth Haru shook him awake. “It’s a holiday in America so I got these sparklers.”

“Five more minutes,” Makoto groaned. “What time…”

“Quarter past four in the morning.”

“Go back to sleep, Haru…”

“I’ll call Nagisa.”

“... alright, okay, I’m getting up…”

There was a courtyard far off, near the track, that no-one took care of anymore. Makoto shivered silently on the way there, felt odd, felt nervous, felt drowsy. The moon hung low in the sky while Haru set all the supplies down on a stone bench, rubbed his hands to warm them up, and then lit a sparkler.

“Independence Day is a big deal in America,” Makoto said, watching Haru hold the sparkler.

“Mm. I like it.”

“... thank you, Haru.”

Haru held the sparkler out to Makoto, who took it. “I want to go with you, again, but…”

“To Hopkins?”

Stars were exploding in front of Makoto’s eyes. In the daylight Haru was pale but at night he had this warm glow around him, flickering sparks flying too close to his face, his eyes bright and soft, mouth hiding a smile. Haru shrugged, now, and took out another sparkler, and said, “It’s a little too late for that, so I thought…”

 

<< 

Winter white stained his cheeks red, blew glass over his blue eyes. “I made it,” Haru breathed out, “I made it, I got in.”

“What, Haru, that’s - that’s amazing! We’re going to be together after all, right?”

“I didn’t think I - but I made it,” Haru repeated, and he hesitated for a moment, and then threw his arms around Makoto’s shoulders and squeezed tight. He smelled like winter.

 

>> 

“I’ll come back, though,” Makoto said, and he didn’t know why but it came out a little desperately. “I’ll come back here. Home.”

“I know. I know.”

Haru tipped his sparkler against Makoto’s until it lit itself. “Hey, remember… that summer when Rin came back…”

“And the relay,” Makoto smiled. “Amakata-sensei was right. Young people do crazy things.”

“Rin’s okay, now,” Haru said, mostly to himself, like he needed to make sure. Makoto hummed in agreement and they sat there until the sky grew warm, their eyes glazed with summer and the blockade of every conversation they were supposed to have had. All the promises they were supposed to have made vanished in the morning dew. Haru leaned on him while they walked back to the dorm; he smelled like winter still, fresh and cold, although that might have been because Makoto by comparison was burning up a galaxy in his chest.

Makoto left three weeks later, on the meticulous schedule that he could follow to the nanosecond if Haru faded out of his life. He had Mikoshiba Seijuurou pick him up while Haru was sleeping, but at least he didn’t leave without the appropriate amount of lingering looks and a mailing address scrawled onto a Post-It note with another, more intimate note stuck to _that_ stuck to Haru’s desk. Seijuurou joked a bit in the car, mostly to keep himself awake during the drive. Makoto nodded politely and dozed off. The next time he could remember being awake, he was setting foot in a bustling airport and the American sun was flayed across the glass windows of the terminal.

 

>> 

By the time Makoto returned to Japan, he’d learned how to speak medical jargon in English, learned an embarrassing amount of l337 sp34k, and acquired an Instagram account that had thirty-seven neatly filtered pictures of coffee mugs, among other things.

Haru was waiting for him at the airport, at a little past two in the morning. Makoto could feel long-buried horror awakening in the small of his back.

“Haru,” he said, like he’d always said his name: unslurred, gentle, heavy with the weight of three hundred and sixty-five unspoken wishes, “Haru, it’s a school night.”

It was a balmy twenty-seven degrees outside. Haru was wearing a white hoodie, the kind that cupped around his body and slunk over his hips, and pale green shorts. Everything about him was soft, soft soft soft, from the shade of his eyes to the fall of his hair to the way his fingers curled loosely into the front pocket of his clothes.

Airport staff whisked by with a mop. Haru opened his mouth to laugh.

His laugh echoed around the mostly empty area and all Makoto could do was stare, as Haru’s cheeks flushed red and he laughed, his eyes tight, his body curling into an apostrophe, the unspoken confessions dangling like bells in the air. Time had smoothed away the quirk in the corner of Haru’s mouth where he used to hide all his smiles, and now they were all here, real, tangible, maybe edible, although Makoto thought he might like to find out when they were somewhere more private.

After an entire year of not hearing Haru laugh, he thought he might like to take full advantage of it and witness the entire process, until Haru straightened and smiled through two-in-the-morning bleariness, full and open and bright and welcoming and so, so content.

“Makoto,” he said finally, taking one of Makoto’s bags and rubbing his palm against the rough fabric. He said Makoto’s name like he always had: simply, cleanly, because it was all he’d ever needed when it came down to it. “I don’t have classes on Fridays, remember?”

 

<< 

“ _We_ made it,” Makoto whispered silently into his hair. Haru didn’t hear him, and Makoto didn’t care. He didn’t think he wanted Haru to hear, just yet.

 

>> 

“I can’t believe it,” Makoto said later, after he’d recovered from jet lag. It was a Friday. “You really don’t have class on Friday. You actually made it.”

They sat in a garden alive with the afternoon light, roses and marigolds and hydrangeas steaming in vivid heat. Haru shook his head, and settled their fingers together.

“I did it for you. With you. You helped me pick out my classes, remember? _We_ made it, Makoto.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
